Wednesday, June 02, 2004
People with chronic illnesses are being shut out of doctors' offices and complain that "cherry-picking" doctors are denying them a right to basic health care.

Emergency rooms and walk-in clinics don't want to be used in lieu of a family doctor, so thousands of Windsorites languish in the twilight zone of needing a doctor's care, but having to wait until their condition deteriorates enough to warrant a trip to the ER.

Edna Walkins, 71, who suffers from chronic lung disease, high blood pressure and diabetes, looked for a doctor for five years. Last month she heard a newly arrived physician was taking patients.

"I went to the office and the secretary asked me to fill out an application form. She was very friendly and I thought I was finally going to start getting treatment again," said Walkins.

"But when I called a few days later she told me I was rejected. She said I had too many problems. Imagine that. Isn't that why you go to see a doctor?"

Jason Onichuk, 32, shifts restlessly in his chair, his back brace providing little comfort for his debilitating back pain.

He carries the file from doctor to doctor, and to hospital ERs. It always gets him rejected.

Onichuk had been prescribed many medications, including sleeping pills and ulcer treatments. But he said the narcotic painkillers given to him by a previous family doctor have made him a pariah.

In February 2002, Onichuk injured his lower back lifting a 250-pound barrel. Spinal injections with cortisone didn't work. The surgeon recommended surgery in about 10 years.

"My family doctor back then ... was great and did everything he could for me. He also prescribed Oxycontin, a narcotic, for pain."

"He disappeared for six months, and when he came back told me he wasn't allowed to prescribe narcotics and said I should find someone else. Ten years is a long time to wait to get out of pain."

Onichuk began looking for a new doctor, without success. He also started going to walk-in clinics and ER.

"The walk-in clinics would take me one time then tell me not to come back, and I know it wasn't the right thing to do but I started going to ER to get my prescription filled," Onichuk said. "They told me I can't use ER for a family doctor and I'm sure they think I'm just coming for drugs, but all I want is my back fixed, to get retrained, and have a normal life. Isn't everyone in this country entitled to health care?"

I have chronic iritis which flares up once or twice a month. I don't always have eye drops to treat it until I can see my optomologist, so I go to the hospital to get a perscirption (I have to, infection can spread to other eye if not treated quickly). On the other hand, the optomologists at the eye clinic will not do a thing for me - they tell me to come back on my specialists clinic days . It's very frustrating, since my schedule is hard to work around, and my specialist is only at the clinic 2 half days a week. Anyway, radical reform is needed, and more doctors.

For the most part, things aren't so bad here, America could use some improvements within their health care system as well, we could go back and forth with this all day.

Poor service is the inevitable consequence of governmental interference. This is especially true in the medical field. Anyone who doubts this does not need to take a trip to Canada. Go to any emergency room in a military hospital and see what is happening there. Mothers with infants whose temperature is 101 are there demanding to be seen. Minor things that most people would treat themselves, such as colds, small cuts, minor fevers, tummy aches etc etc are now taken to the emergency room. Why? Because it's free, it's quick, and it's convenient. The FREE aspect being the major cause of the abuse of the system. I'm willing to bet my last dollar that if military families had to pay as little as twenty dollars for a trip to the emergency room, the number of patients would be cut by 75%. It's not that they can't afford it, it just puts things in a different perspective.

The same thing is happening in the Canadian medical system. Patients who have no need of medical expertise are clogging the system. They do so because it is "free". The predominant socialist mentality is that if something is free, you had better get some of it. Doctors would rather treat nuisance patients with minor or negligible problems because it is fast and easy and pays the same as treating those with chronic and/or complex maladies. As a result, seriously ill patients are rejected. Tragically, they are the ones truly in need of medical intervention.

If a Canadian needs a CT scan, he or she faces a wait of up to two years. So now Canadians come to the USA seeking medical care which cannot be obtained in Canada at any price, at least not within a reasonable time. Meanwhile, Americans go to Canada to get cheaper prescriptions.

Originally posted by Merlin1047
The same thing is happening in the Canadian medical system. Patients who have no need of medical expertise are clogging the system. They do so because it is "free". The predominant socialist mentality is that if something is free, you had better get some of it. Doctors would rather treat nuisance patients with minor or negligible problems because it is fast and easy and pays the same as treating those with chronic and/or complex maladies. As a result, seriously ill patients are rejected. Tragically, they are the ones truly in need of medical intervention.

If a Canadian needs a CT scan, he or she faces a wait of up to two years. So now Canadians come to the USA seeking medical care which cannot be obtained in Canada at any price, at least not within a reasonable time. Meanwhile, Americans go to Canada to get cheaper prescriptions.

Say howdy to each other at the border.

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Many people go to the emergency room because there is a shortage of gp's in this country. The longest I've ever heard of someone waiting for a ct scan is a month, and this was not a serious case. I agree far to many people go to the emergency room for nothing, but one need not point the finger here or at the military for that. Canadian health care is in extreme decline, and will be the way you speak if things continue, but the cases mentioned are fairly uncommon. There have been serious budget cuts to health care recently, and sadly they only seriously affect seniors. BTW, how long was your last trip to the emergeny room? Mine lasted 2 hours, but next time it could be worse.

Selective article aside, the truth is, is that socialized medicine, quality wise, is not that bad up in Canada. If you need help immediately, you will get just that. If you need help, you will get it, eventually. While exceptions can always be brought forth, the reality is that it does work medically.

Personally, I don't think the problem is the level of medical care, it's the amount of money and effeciency in giving it. I'm all for socialized medicine to provide basic care, I believe it is a great equalizer like education. However, I'd have no quams with a two-tiered system to take the financial load off the government. I'd also be opened to a government paid, private system such as found in nations like Sweden.

To me there are the three ultimate goals to a medicare program:
1) Provide an acceptable level of medical care for all
2) Reduce the costs of medical care as much as possible
3) Ensure flexibility in the structure of the system as so it can be sustainable in the long term.

That's what I thought. As Issac and I have both stated, health care in Canada is not as it is being presented in the media selected in this post. Canadians do not have an "it's free, gimme, gimme" attitude when it comes to health care. There are other problems here of course, they exsist everywhere.

Issac: What is a government paid, private system? If selective choosing of patients is becoming a problem, wouldn't a two tiered system add to this problem as opposed to helping, given the shortage of doctors in the country? How are things in Manitoba?

Originally posted by Isaac Brock
To me there are the three ultimate goals to a medicare program:
1) Provide an acceptable level of medical care for all
2) Reduce the costs of medical care as much as possible
3) Ensure flexibility in the structure of the system as so it can be sustainable in the long term. [/B]

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Well good luck with that. I do not understand how you can remain blind to the obvious shortcomings of any bureaurocracy. It appears from all I have read that Canadian medical care is already headed in the wrong direction to effect your first goal. I wish I could cite the source of the article which stated the two year wait for a CT scan, but I read it some months ago in a medical magazine at my doctor's office.

Second, getting government involved in the free market is rarely successful. Whenever prices for goods and services are dictated by government, two things are certain to follow - shortages and surpluses. Shortages of things in high demand and surpluses of those items not desired or required. Proof of that can be found in any communist, totalitarian, or socialist society. Simply look to the former Soviet Union, Sweden (50% income tax), any African dictatorship, Cuba, China, (which is starting to adopt a "market" economy) or Germany whose economy is in decline due to the excessive social programs in effect there. These are just a few examples, there are many more. Government can control prices, but only in the short term. Eventually the inevitable happens and government price controls create chaos. Proof of that statement can be found in this country's brief experience with price control during the administration of Jimmy Carter (our national idiot).

Third, if you can show me a government bureaurocracy that is "flexible", I'd damn sure like to see it. Because that would be a rare critter indeed.

How many major medical discoveries has the Canadian medical system produced compared to the American? Certainly this is not the result of better doctors in the US. Instead it is the result of capitalism at work. Discoveries pay here. Medical entrepeneurs can get rich here if they discover a new cure or treatment. But in Canada, the government regulates the price of medications. If you were unable to get medication from American pharmaceutical companies, you'd be out of luck. If all countries in the world had the same policies as yours, there would be little, if any, research being conducted simply because there would be no profit in it.

Your goals are worthwhile, but using government as an intermediary is no way to achieve them. The only product guaranteed to be produced by government is waste and inefficiency. Seems both our countries already enjoy a sufficiency of those.

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